Origins of the Warfare State

World War II and the Transformation of American Politics

Carl Boggs

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781315469515
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The post-World War II emergence of a full-blown state of perpetual war is arguably the most important feature of contemporary American politics. This book examines the "warfare state" in terms of a broad ensemble of structures, policies, and ideologies: permanent war economy, national security-state, global expansion of military bases, merger of state, corporate, and military power, an imperial presidency, the nuclear establishment, and superpower ambitions. Carl Boggs makes the argument that the "Good War" led to an authoritarian system that has expanded throughout the post-war decades, undermining liberal-democratic institutions and values in the process. He goes on to suggest that current American electoral politics show no sign of rolling back the warfare state and in fact, may push it to a new threshold bordering on American fascism.

1

From Pearl Harbor to the “Asian Pivot”

The optimum point of departure for exploring how World War II has shaped American politics is surely Pearl Harbor—not simply the Japanese attack itself but the complex historical forces leading up to, surrounding, and following the attack. An epic moment in twentieth-century history, the Pearl Harbor events have few parallels either militarily or politically, for the U.S. or the world at large. It clearly goes down in the lore of armed strategy as one of the most daring, risky, and audaciously successful military exploits ever, all the more astonishing given the vastly unequal power relationship between the Japanese and the U.S. It brought destruction of the American battleship fleet in the Pacific—a fleet in those years viewed with awe and envy around the world. At a time of strong public and elite antiwar sentiment, the attack brought the U.S. into World War II against the Axis powers, giving the country a profound sense of wronged self-righteousness that fueled its four-year pursuit of war to victorious conclusion. The events fundamentally altered the way Americans came to view the global arena and the U.S.’s place within it.

Just as important, the Pearl Harbor attack set the U.S. on a path towards an institutionalized military-industrial system without rival—a warfare state that would sink deep roots in the economy, political system, and culture, from which there would be no retreat or reversal. World War II established an historical trajectory that would persist well into the twenty-first century. Although Pearl Harbor in the early 1940s symbolized defeat and humiliation for the U.S., the attack has over time been duly celebrated in the form of an endless production of ceremonies, rituals, books, TV specials, monuments, and of course Hollywood movies. Initially a great shock to the American psyche, it has become an iconic memory of the ultimate Good War legacy.

The American Asia-Pacific Strategy

Initially experienced as a stunning military defeat—a “day of infamy” in President Franklin Roosevelt’s words—Pearl Harbor became a launching pad for U.S. pursuit of its own imperial agenda in the Pacific arena. A surface reality in fact concealed much deeper processes and interests at work. Viewed from the perspective of 2015, after Washington had launched numerous postwar military adventures on the basis of flagrant deceptions and myths, a revisiting of Pearl Harbor in both history and culture offers a wealth of historical and political lessons.

In culture as well as politics, World War II hovers over the American landscape many decades after the first armistice was signed aboard the battleship USS Missouri—a phenomenon that transcends nostalgia and remembrance. The war, of course, was one of the epic moments in world history, its consequences in all spheres of life still deeply felt many decades later. Of course World War II was easily the most popular war the U.S. ever fought, with unparalleled support on the home front and participation of some 18 million Americans in uniform, with additional tens of millions in military production and logistics made possible by sustained mobilization of human and material resources. Patriotic fervor surrounding the four years of conflict, fueled in no small measure by a deep sense of national victimhood stemming from the Pearl Harbor events, has never been matched before or since. Yet its meaning for American political culture goes far beyond any historical specificity, representing today a watershed moment behind U.S. imperial agendas in the Pacific and the institutionalized military edifice behind those agendas.

The forces leading to Pearl Harbor have roots in the nineteenth century when the U.S.—still absorbed in its own internal development—made its first real overtures toward overseas expansion. With effective closure of the frontier in the 1890s, an American Pacific strategy began to gain momentum. Propelled by the twin drives of capitalism and nationalism, U.S. elites looked increasingly towards Asia for resources and markets—and for crucial geopolitical leverage.

Capitalism was determined to expand beyond fixed national borders, fueled by an imperial ideology aligned with the blessings of a God-ordained Manifest Destiny and the great virtues of white-settler culture.¹ This ideology was arrogantly embraced by the most respected American leaders of the period, above all Presidents William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt. Foreign intervention, migration, and warfare were the essence of a Pacific strategy born in the 1890s.

As for Hawaii, its strategic location roughly midway between North America and the Asian landmasses initially placed it at the center of any U.S. imperial designs. Already with an economic and missionary presence in Hawaii, in the 1890s Washington moved to overthrow the monarchy, orchestrating an 1893 insurrection that would lead to expansion by joint resolution of Congress in July 1898. That was the very year McKinley declared war on Spain, opening the way toward U.S. control over not only Hawaii but the Philippines, various Pacific islands, Cuba and Puerto Rico. At a time of intense racism, American leaders—ever mindful of economic and geopolitical objectives—pledged to enlighten and uplift the Asian masses. In the Philippines, this great “uplifting” process would take three years of military repression costing hundreds of thousands of lives. For both McKinley and Roosevelt, this was the destiny of a superior civilization.

Hawaii would eventually become the center of U.S. economic, political, and above all, military objectives in Asia—ideally situated in the middle of the Pacific. The Navy had already established a presence there by the 1890s. Formally annexed in August 1898, the islands became a U.S. territory in 1900—prelude to much later statehood in 1959. In the decades preceding the attacks on Pearl Harbor, the American military would appropriate hundreds of thousands of acres on Oahu alone, for huge Navy and Army bases along with supporting facilities. Since 1893, according to a recent statement by the Hawaiian Sovereignty Movement, “The United States has malformed Hawaii into a command and control center for U.S. imperialism in Oceania and Asia.” It added: “We have suffered from the effects of being the pawns of U.S. wars in the world.”² One result of this “occupation” (for which President Bill Clinton issued a formal apology in 1993) has been steady deterioration of indigenous political rights and historical traditions.³

Following World War I, once the world was “made safe for democracy”, Washington renewed its fixations on the Pacific, looking especially to outmaneuver a rising Japanese power for markets, resources, and geopolitical advantage. In the 1920s, rapid U.S. economic growth brought to the fore an urgent need for oil, iron, and other resources to feed the expanding automobile, steel, rubber, and electronics sectors. At the same time, the power structure focused on a supposedly mounting Japanese threat fueled by the pervasive media image of “spreading yellow hordes”—a sign of sharpening U.S.–Japanese rivalry during the 1920s and 1930s. In such a global context, the two nationalisms—American and Japanese—could be expected to not only flourish but clash, giving rise simultaneously to competing military objectives. Viewed thusly, the conventional wisdom of a fierce U.S. “isolationism” in the years preceding World War II has far overblown.

In May 1903 the first battleship USS Wisconsin entered the Hawaiian port for coal, water, and other supplies. A Pacific fleet was first created in 1907 when ships of the Asiatic squadron and Pacific squadron were combined under one command. Accordingly, in 1908 the Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard was established, setting in motion a phase of steady U.S. military expansion in Hawaii from 1908 to 1919. In May 1908 dredging and enlargement of the Pearl Harbor channel was underway, permitting entry of the largest ships along with construction of a dry dock. In 1917, Ford Island, located in the middle of Pearl Harbor, was purchased for joint navy and army use in strengthening military aviation capabilities. The U.S. military preserve in the Islands gradually increased through the 1920s and 1930s, ostensibly to counter Japanese naval supremacy in the Pacific. Passage of the Two Ocean Naval Expansion Act—embraced by President Roosevelt, a champion of naval power—facilitated this process.

Until May 1940, the main elements of the U.S. battle fleet in the Pacific—including several battleships—were stationed on the west cost (mainly San Diego and Long Beach). In summer 1940 FDR had instructed U.S. naval forces to take up an “advanced position” (logistically permanent status) at Pearl Harbor, a move strongly resisted by the commander, Admiral James Richardson, who was then replaced by Admiral Husband Kimmel, in command at the time of the Japanese attack. The Pacific fleet was formally reestablished as a permanent force in February 1941.

This strategem corresponded to ongoing American buildup in the Pacific throughout the pre-World War II years. The U.S. naval presence in the Philippines, Hawaii, and scattered Pacific islands matched the Japanese expansion into China and Southeast Asia. Confrontation was built into the very logic of imperial rivalry, which the U.S ratcheted up during 1940 and 1941 with its systematic policy of new military deployments, provocations, and economic embargo. The very fact that the U.S. moved its Pacific fleet to Hawaii in early 1941 was viewed by Japanese leaders as something of an escalation. As H.P. Willmott has written: “What was happening by January 1941 was that Japan and the United States either had entered or were about to enter realms of self-fulfilling prophecy whereby their separate actions fed off one another.”⁴ To view the complex historical development leading to the Pearl Harbor attack as simply a manifestation of Japanese expansion and perfidy would be crudely one-sided.

Far from being a peaceful island paradise at the time of the attack, Hawaii was more akin to a military fortress central to U.S. geopolitical ambitions. In December 1941, the American Pacific fleet based in Hawaii consisted of no less than nine battleships, three aircraft carriers, 12 heavy cruisers, eight light cruisers, 50 destroyers, 33 submarines, and 100 heavy bombers—hardly the mark of an innocent power in the throes of “isolationism”.

The Turning Point

The standard view of the audacious Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor is that it forced U.S. entry into World War II. Though obviously true, the attack would have even larger historical significance: it gave momentum to a bold American Pacific strategy, which in fact gathered steam after 1945.

We know that the Japanese naval armada, planned and assembled in the months leading up to December 7, 1941, pulled off one of the most remarkable military feats ever. On November 6 the naval assault forces—20 submarines, six aircraft carriers, two battleships, three cruisers, 11 destroyers, eight tankers and 423 planes—departed Hitokappu Bay in Japan, passing undetected on a northwesterly course to reach a point, 200 miles north of Oahu, where they could deliver a devastating blow to the U.S. Pacific fleet. The results (including the sinking of four battleships) are too well known to require full recapitulation here. Aside from having been an embarrassing military fiasco, Pearl Harbor revealed a series of major U.S. political, military, and intelligence fiascos that ultimately led to several investigations, commissions, and reports that in fact never satisfactorily resolved all the issues in doubt. Precipitating an immediate declaration of war by an outraged President Roosevelt, the attack came to symbolize the ultimate sense of military victimhood: a dastardly “sneak attack” on an innocent, peace-loving nation just minding its own business.

In reality Pearl Harbor marked a point when two wars—in Europe and the Pacific—merged into one extended global conflict, with the Pacific Theater involving a fierce confrontation between two powers seeking imperial control over territories and resources. As the Pearl Harbor events, then and later, signified a perpetual American search for Good War themes, in both politics and culture, here it is worth noting how a terrible catastrophe could be so dramatically turned around and converted into the perfect American triumph.

Aside perhaps from the Normandy invasion, surely no World War II moment embellishes the Good War trope more than Pearl Harbor. Hollywood movies have always been central to this cultural endeavor—Michael Bay’s 2001 blockbuster Pearl Harbor being the most expensive, most ambitious, and most technically sophisticated of the lot. While Bay and producer Jerry Bruckheimer would no doubt deny it, their version of the events probably best fits the propagandistic narrative contours of the formulaic World War II narrative, replete with motifs of national heroism, individual courage, and military triumph over evil, that both romanticize and distort the historical events in question. What preceded Pearl Harbor were several documentaries, including John Ford’s Oscar-winning December 7th (1943), and three features: Howard Hawks’ Air Force (1943), Fred Zinnemann’s From Here to Eternity (1953), and Richard Fleischer’s Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970). The only remotely accurate, objective, and balanced account of the Japanese attacks is the latter movie, although it too suffers from a failure to frame events within their historical context. The release 30 years later of such a heavily one-dimensional and distorted spectacle as Pearl Harbor only underscores its ideological function in replicating Good-War discourse.⁵

The December 7th documentary turns out to be especially illuminating. In it Ford (with collaborator Gregg Toland) wove together a series of still photos, historical footage, and contrived scenes made in the back lot of Fox studios to produce an extremely patriotic, pro-war film, enhanced by the acting presence of John Huston. The bulk of the film is dedicated to show-casing the unique “Aloha Culture” of Hawaii—images of a happy, peace loving, socially-mixed society that, at the same time, had become wonderfully Americanized after U.S. business interests had moved onto the islands. Hawaii in 1941 was a land of sugar cane and pineapple fields, beautiful homes and hotels, a thriving tourist mecca, diverse sites of worship, warm and friendly people, a haven for passing ships. School children are depicted singing “God Bless America”. U.S. corporations flourish, made more profitable by the import of cheap labor from Asia and the Pacific islands.

Within this Polynesian mecca of beauty and innocence, however, it was possible to identify a festering problem: the Japanese Consulate in Honolulu, in its service to imperial power, became an active center of espionage and treachery. Local inhabitants, along with the Japanese workers, were observed reporting on U.S. ship, troop, and plane movements in and around Pearl Harbor, laying the groundwork for political subversion and military assault that American officials were too naïve to think possible—in part, no doubt, owing to their own racism. Ford and Toland depict a Japanese enemy that exemplifies two-face scheming and diabolical motives. The attack on the U.S. fleet is shown more realistically here than in most later films (including Pearl Harbor), coming as Hawaii sleeps or attends Sunday religious services, striking at a happy tropical paradise with no logic beyond sheer evil. That Hawaii in 1941 was a bastion of U.S. military power—key to its strategy for Asia-Pacific hegemony—was nowhere evident. Virtually every subsequent documentary on Pearl Harbor has followed the script laid out by Ford and Toland.

Offering a far more complex, variegated picture of life (both civilian and military) in Hawaii in the months proceeding the attack, From Here to Eternity, deservedly winner of several Academy Awards, focused mainly on peacetime military (army, not navy) operations—the tough discipline, rebellion in the ranks, personal hatreds and rivalries, wild bouts of drinking and womanizing. Based on James Jones’ novel, the movie presented one of the most penetrating critiques of military culture at the onset of World War II, in which disloyalty, violence, and death appears as the predictable outcome of a system riddled with repression and conflict. As in the book, the film contains only a brief (if still dramatic) sequence depicting the attack itself, and nothing on the battleship navy that was targeted in the bombing. The U.S. military stationed in Hawaii was depicted so negatively that the Board of Admirals banned the picture from being shown on American ships.⁶

Despite serious flaws, Tora! Tora! Tora! remains easily the best film ever made on the Pearl Harbor events. Produced at the height of the Vietnam disaster, Fleisher’s picture (co-directed with two Japanese filmmakers) approaches historical accuracy, enhanced by its cinema verite style and genuine efforts to frame the attack from both sides, with Japanese language spoken where relevant. Throughout, Japanese military figures appear as something other than cartoonish villains—itself a radical departure form the entire cycle of World War II movies. While relatively weak in presenting the larger context of events, Tora! does graphically show the American defeat in its dramatic totality, including the strange lack of preparedness leading up to the bombings. Billed as the “most spectacular film ever made”, it did set out to put on screen authentic recreation ...